MIA in the ATL

Did you miss me on my week hiatus? (or a little longer, something like that, sorry)

So it has been crazy busy and I have a lot to catch up on. A transit funding bill was passed (trust me, I'll get to this one), I went Amtrak camping, we had another photo shoot, I went to San Francisco, and I joined the ranks of the (semi)unemployed. I'm still at the shelter, but don't have a day job in Cobb County. I'm excited for the time to catch up on my blog and find that kickass job I've been dreaming of (hint, hint, MARTA) but I'm distressed because I no longer have a reason to ride CCT. Should I to change my name to MARTAgirl now?

Let's talk transit funding. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, I love MARTA, I need it to run, what else would I blog about? A bill got passed a Thursday ago, on the 38th day of session. Basically, this bill:

a - creates TSPLOSTs to be voted on in 2012 that would be in effect for 10 years
b - relieves the MARTA 50/50 restriction for three years
c - says new money voted for in the TSPLOSTs can not be used for MARTA salaries
d - says allows Clayton County to vote for a sales tax to fund transit
e - seriously maims the MARTA board

I'm probably missing something, but these are the points I want to talk on.

I'm disappointed.

I'll go with Dubose Porter on this one, this is barely a bandaid. I mean, good job Georgia for getting off your ass and doing something, boo for not doing anything terribly useful. We wouldn't see money from the TSPLOSTs at best until 2013, more like 2014 if it passes. And then it's only good for 10 years, which is about 10 years shy of the 20 year minimum to get and federal funds. So, FAIL.

Relieving the 50/50 restriction is nice, but three years? Really? You still can't trust them with their own money? And we all know that the relief isn't enough, because they've been burning through their capital reserves for necessary things, like the new FTA requirements in response to the accidents last year in DC. So, FAIL.

Can't use new funds on salaries? Because having people to drive the bus and operate the trains isn't really that important, right? And neither are the cops and station agents. FAIL.

Clayton County can vote to join MARTA. We just have to convince them this is something they want to do, and since their buses were absorbed by GRTA and sold due to federal regulations on the funds used to purchase those buses, they outta, it's their only chance at transit right now. This would also mean an influx on money for MARTA, so for once, WIN.

Slashing the MARTA board. MARTA and the board didn't show up during the final hours of negotiating the bill, so this would seem like a big old slap in the face. Mayor Reed even sent a cop car, lights and all, to pick MARTA CEO Dr. Scott up at MARTA headquarters, but, due to board instructions, she still didn't go. Maybe if she had, the bill would have been more favorable for MARTA. The MARTA board is full of older civil rights leaders who drive to the board meetings, so I'm not too sorry to some of them go. We need riders on that board, people who are more invested in MARTA, so I'm gonna call this a win. Now I need to campaign to get on the board. I hear there's a small stipend. Heck, I'd do it for an unlimited ride pass.

Three epic fails plus one ray of hope and a minor win equals

FAIL.

Transit Funding!

I know, you're probably getting sick of me prattling on about funding for MARTA.  All you really read this blog for is my stories of getting attacked by homeless dudes or the Boob Tap.  You even like the stories of me getting hit on, repeatedly.  But I started this blog as an advocate for transit, and by golly I'm going to MARTAgeddon and Draconian y'all til death.  Or at least until we get some money.  I'll let you bet amongst yourself which happens first.

But there may be some hope on the horizon.  Let's take a look at our playing field, as it stands on the morning of the 36th day of the session.  That gives us four more days, so maybe like two weeks.  Who knows.  They may need a break, I don't know how these things work.  I would probably need a break.  I spent one day at the capitol this session, I'm good until next year.

Anyways, so what we have on the table are:

HB 1393, sponsored by the awesome Rep. Roberta Abdul-Salaam.  This bill would remove the tax cap on Clayton County and would allow them to vote to pass a one cent sales tax for transit funding.

HB 277, a regional transportation bill (TSPLOSTs) which would allow regions to pass a one cent sales tax for transit funding and creates a 2020 Transportation Trust Fund Oversight Committee.  This one is in a joint transportation conference committee which consists of a bunch of republicans from outside the Metro region.  Why there are no Metro Atlantan reps on that one amazes me.

SB 39, again, another TSPLOST bill.

SB 120, Sen. Doug Stoner's bill to reduce the 50/50 restriction on MARTA.  This bill, written last year, is still in the House transportation committee.

SB 285, same deal, reducing the 50/50 restriction.  Also still in the House committee.

SB 520 passed out of the House transportation committee yesterday, so this one looks promising.  Along with removing the 50/50 restriction, this bill would also restore the public transportation office to the Department of Transportation, which should help transit statewide.  It would also rearrange the MARTA board.

I think that has us covered.  I think we need to show overwhelming support for HB 1393, HB 277, and SB 520.  Basically, I'm just picking SB 520 because it seems like the more substantial bill of the 50/50 ones.  What we do need, however, is for Clayton County to get transit, the 50/50 restriction to be lifted from MARTA, regional input on project lists, and funding for transit that has a flexible sunset provision (because you can't receive funding from the feds for transit that isn't funded locally for a minimum of 20 years).  So e-mail or call your reps, and the folks on that joint transportation conference committee and give your support for MARTA!

You can find out who your elected officials are here.

And those conference committee folks are listed out here.

Remember, transit isn't paid for at the fare box, it needs support from the state and local governments.  It's a joint effort, folks.  How can Georgia expect MARTA to go on it's own when no other large transit system in the nation does?

(PS - Like how I worked in that role call of my favorite blog posts?  I hope you read them.  All.)

One More Bill

Apparently I left a bill out of my transit rant from yesterday.  Another viable option is still SB 39, which would amend Chapter 8 of Title 48 to provide a 1% sales tax to fund transportation projects in special transportation districts.  AKA TSPLOSTs.

Transit Funding - Again!

Yup, it's time for me to get back up on the transportation funding soapbox.  Last Friday was cross-over day, the day when a bill, if it hasn't crossed over from the house to the senate or vise versa, it dies.  So, let's take a look at the funding playing field now.

House Bill 1218, Governor Perdue's laughable attempt at a transportation funding solution is a casualty of last week.  It relieved MARTA of it's 50/50 restriction on tax dollars from Fulton and Dekalb counties, but it didn't offer much else.  After hanging out in the House, a MARTA exclusion had been tacked on, and due to some revisions, GP had even said he was going to veto it in its current form.  So that now leaves us with HB 277, HR 206, and, I believe, SB 120 is still out there.

HB 277 - House Bill 277 amends Title 32 of the Official Code of Georgia to create a 2020 Transportation Trust Fund Oversight Committee which will determine what to do with funds that would in part be gained from an additional 1% special transportation use and sales tax.

HR 206 - House Resolution 206 that does, in essence, the same thing with less fanfare, proposing an amendment to the state constitution to create a Transportation Trust Fund to levy a 1% sales and use tax and determine the use of those funds.

Also, Friday gave us HB 1393 which lifts the sales tax cap on Clayton County, allowing voters to pass a 1% sales tax to fund transit, much like Dekalb and Fulton counties do now.  This could be a save for C-TRAN, which is desperately needed.  A lot of people don't realize what a reduction or total loss of service of transit means.  I've had this discussion with a coworker and she says people got along fine without MARTA 30 years ago.  Well a lot of things have happened in those 30 years, and they still had buses which offered a level of service.  Clayton County will have no service as of Wednesday.

So what?

Well, in a survey published by www.11alive.com, most C-TRAN riders will loose their jobs.  See, a few years back, Atlanta razed all the projects in the name of progress and sent those people to Clayton County.  Therefore, Clayton County is full of working poor.  The working poor are those on minimum wage, and fall below the poverty line of $11,201 a year.  These are people who have jobs, but can't afford cars.  These are the people I work with at my shelter.  So out of the 500 riders surveyed, 75% said they may loose their jobs and 52% may have to quit school.  These are people who are trying to make their lives better, but are being forced to continue the cycle of poverty because of funding.  People who went to school when they were laid-off.  61% use C-TRAN to get to work, 12% own a car.  54% of those riders are between the ages of 16 and 34 and 23% of them make less than $10,000 a year.  41% have some form of college education and 91% said they'd support an additional 1% sales tax devoted to transit.  92% are black.

Remember, though, that MARTA can't go into Clayton County because of it's charter, they actually were a vendor to the county for C-TRAN.   How could they afford to operate in another county, anyways?

And just so we're clear, because I had to have this conversation this weekend with someone who I thought would know, transit is not paid for at the fare box.  Period.  It's not that MARTA is mismanaged or that enough people aren't riding, no transit system is self-sustaining, not MTA in New York or WMATA in DC, that's why they're all funded by the state, o, well, except for MARTA.

There are additional transit funding sources that are readily available out there.  Things like TSPLOSTs, but those won't help soon enough, and the removal of the 50/50 stipulation is, while necessary, no longer enough to fix the problem.  There's also the 1% sales tax on motor fuel which currently goes to the General Fund.  I know, they need that money too, but it can help.  As it stands, however, these moneys are only available for roads and bridges, and this would need to be changed so that all transportation purposes qualify.

And while I don't have the full scoop on this, apparently Dr. Beverly Scott, CEO of MARTA, also has proposed to sell MARTA property, like the rail yard, to the state, giving MARTA an instant source of cash.  This could also make the state a share holder and giving it some of the control it seems desperate to have.  I think it's actually a good plan.

So that's where we're at, best I can figure.

Transit Funding Soapbox

Again, in layman's terms, let's examine the options for MARTA as they currently stand, based on my understanding.  It changes often.  If I get this wrong, hopefully Two or somebody will correct me.  Cause I'm trying to figure this one out myself.

See, MARTA is facing a $120 million deficit for the fiscal year 2011, starting in July.  Without some source of funds, they face those Draconian service cuts (i.e. death by Harry Potter)  that could mean MARTA would stop running three days a week.

There are a number of things to watch out for in terms of funding:

1.  SB 120.  This bill is still out there, waiting in the wings since it never made it out of the House transportation committee.  Remember, it was tabled during the last session, so it's waiting for someone to pull it out, dust it off, and frickin vote for it!  For those who don't remember, SB 100 (as in senate bill) was written by Rep. Doug Stoner to alleviate the 50/50 restriction placed on the sales tax MARTA receives.  This restriction, placed on the 1% sales tax Fulton and Dekalb counties collect for MARTA, dictates that half of the funds go to capital improvements while half goes to operating funds.  This means, only half of that income can go to fuel, salaries, electricity, and the basic day-to-day expenses that MARTA incurs. 

Now will this will help the problem, it's not a solution.  Basically, MARTA would burn through their reserves and still be left broke.  Only broker.  So will we still want this, MARTA needs something else.  Which could come in terms of:

2.  The Dems are working on some fancy legislation dealing with the 4% sales tax on gasoline.  As it stands, for every dollar of gasoline that you by in Georgia, you pay 4 cents in tax.  3 cents of this go to roads and bridges, and 1 cent goes into the general funds.  What the Dems are proposing is that this 1 cent go towards transit in general, including MARTA.  They're smart, too, because they're proposing to make this a gradual transition, so that a quarter of the 1 cent will move from the general funds to transit, taking four years for the entire move.  This would allow for immediate funds to come to MARTA without a state/region wide vote.

3.  Governor Perdue's plan.  See, the governor's office came out last year saying, "MARTA didn't come to us saying they have problems" and basically were inactive in the fight to save MARTA.  This year, the G.P. has proposed some sort of transportation plan, but it's lacking in terms of funding for MARTA.  There are two key components of this plan to watch out for, though.

The G.P. has proposed selling $300 million in bonds to fund transportation projects.  His plan comes with a project list, and MARTA isn't included.  So it's my understanding that MARTA is trying to get in on a little bit of that action.  I'm not sure when those bonds go for sale, though.

The G.P. has also written into his plan SPLOSTS, special-purpose, local-option sales taxes.  This means that the metro counties could vote to tax themselves an additional cent for MARTA and transit in general.  This one isn't so ideal for a number of reasons:  Where does that leave Dekalb and Fulton counties?  They already pay sales tax for MARTA, can they opt-out or would they have to pay another cent?  And would neighboring areas vote for the tax?  I don't have a lot of faith in my neighbors.  And why would Cobb pay for MARTA when it runs CCT?  So what would happen to CCT in a TSPLOST?  But the biggest problem with this is that it won't go into effect for years, so that doesn't help MARTA's immediate need.  These are also only good for 8 years, and in order to get Federal funds for transportation, you have to prove you can fund it for a minimum of 20 years.

4.  SPLOST legislation outside of the G.P.'s plan, still, not ideal for the reasons listed above.

5.  Collecting the sales tax.  Apparently the state's Department of Revenue has been a little lax on collecting the sales tax from businesses and hasn't even kept up the records for business licenses.  Despite this, there are also many exclusions from the sales tax, so money isn't being collected on certain items.  I forget what, just bare with me, okay?  But there's talk of this adding up to billions of dollars of lost tax money.  So the state is now left with the task of collecting these funds and this could increase MARTA's coffers as well.  The debate now is, should the state collect or leave it up to the individual counties?  Who will probably be more eager to collect.

Now you may be asking yourself, why should you care about MARTA?  I know my coworker thinks it's worthless and has no effect on the city.  For starters, think of the half a million people who ride MARTA.  A huge chuck of those people ride MARTA to doctor's appointments, to the grocery store, to things that are necessary to life.  How will my ladies at the shelter get to Grady or the Women's Day Shelter without MARTA, because there's not enough government funding out there for cab fare.  It's $13 for a cab just to the train station!  Let alone downtown!

So if we estimate that a quarter of MARTA riders are busy running their very important errands, that leaves the rest of us going to work.  For those of us, like me, the AC, and One, who own cars, we have to go back to the roads.  I'm gonna be conservative and say that adds another 150,000 cars to the road, and you think traffic in Atlanta is bad now?  Then what about the folks who don't have cars and who most likely can't afford one, like the working poor.  How do they get to work?  They probably won't, so they'll loose their jobs, become homeless or go on the system, and those businesses will be without their hard workers.  And I don't care what you say, those people are doing jobs that others don't want to do, so it's not like people are rushing to fill them, so they will go undone.  Like the maids at the hotels in Atlanta.  Who will clean the rooms for all the tourists and conventioneers?

O, that's right, we won't need them to be cleaned, because people will stop coming here.  Conventions come to Atlanta because it's convenient.  There's MARTA to bring folks up from the airport to downtown and Buckhead.  These convention goers can go places without need of a car because we have MARTA.  If MARTA 's not around, conventions will start going to other cities, like Charlotte, and Atlanta will be left behind.  Taxis are expensive!  It's $30 some dollars to downtown from the airport and $40 some to Buckhead.  Plus tip and you're spending more than $50 for cab fare.  This does not please conventioneers in an already bad economy where folks simply aren't going to that many conventions, training budgets have been cut.

And people will stop coming to Atlanta cause the airport's probably going to start sucking bad in the wake of MARTA service cuts.  Think about it, a great deal of the employees of the airport get there on MARTA, I ride the bus with them in the mornings.  Without MARTA, they're either not going to work, making those epic security lines at the world's busiest airport that much worse, or they're going to be parking everywhere, meaning parking is going to suck that much worse.  And where will you park your car when you go to conventions in other cities?  Not at the airport! 

Think about all the world-class cities we have in the US.  NYC, DC, Chicago, Boston, they all have transit.  London, Paris, Shanghai, transit!  Where will Atlanta be without MARTA?  Birmingham, that's where (and I know what sort of good threat that is for you native Georgians!)

CCTgirl talks transit funding

Now, in my completely untechnical, I-think-I-get-this-sort-of fashion, I'm going to tackle that whole transit funding issue as it pertains to Georgia and MARTA.  I do not work in transit, or the government, so I'm not an expert.  But I think it needs to get out there, and since I'm trying to add to the advocacy world, this kind of stuff is important.

So, this started because I got a phone call from CV, my new lawyer-type friend, who wanted to inform me of my inaccuracies in my earlier funding post?  Inaccuracies?  I actually stole that stuff from my lobbyist-type friend, so I thought it was at least semi-accurate, if not without a propaganda.  And besides, Two would tell me if I got it wrong, right?   But CV went on to explain that I was part right, but that the game had changed.

See, MARTA is asking for access to its own capitol funds to keep itself in operation.  What CV was saying is that due to new federal guidelines regarding safety measures, stemming from that accident in DC (way to screw it up for all of us, WMATA), that MARTA was burning through that reserve and it wouldn't be enough to save it.  CV said this is the talk down at the legislature.

Well heck.  How had I not heard about this?  First I asked my favorite lobbyist, and he had no idea what I was talking about.  So then I asked Two, who said CV was right, but that I really needed to ask One.  One said that MARTA eis using funds to work on those safety regulations, but that this was an oversimplification of the situation, and that there is still money to help out MARTA, and, of course, they still need access to it.  But like I mentioned before, this will only get them through the next fiscal year, then they're broker than broke with no back-up plan, which is why we ned new transit funding.

Then the question remains, where is this funding going to come from?  Yesterday, republicans came out saying that they don't support a constitutional amendment to create a sales tax  for the funding.  You can read about that at the ajc:

GOP lawmakers abandon November vote on transportation sales tax

Instead, they favor new district, once again, making it a metro problem.

But it seems like this is our one shot to get things right, folks are going to be reluctant to keep going through this session after session, so we  have to make sure that we get funding that will support transit well into the future.  The Saporta Report has a really great take on that here:

If we can't do it right, maybe we should put the breaks on new transportation funding

And if I got it wrong, let me know!